The travels of Tim and Megan: 2010

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Vienna, Austria - Christmas Markets

Christmas Eve

As has become the norm for our travels, we rose at a ridiculous hour on the morning of Christmas Eve and caught a cab out to Heathrow. Thankfully the snow and ice that had caused chaos at the airports earlier in the week had dispersed and we were able to fly as planned! We arrived at Heathrow around 3.45am and, contrary to the doom and gloom news reports, it was very quiet. Our flight to Vienna left on time at 6.45am and we touched down in the Austrian capital around 10.00am.

We had decided to split our Christmas holiday between Vienna and the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, which is just 60km to the east. We wanted to see the Christmas markets in Vienna, which only run until 24 December, so we spent the day in Vienna before heading to Bratislava for two days.

Unfortunately, the transport and train stations in Vienna caused some delay and amusement. We got the "CAT" airport train into Wien Mitte (train station) without any problems, but it went downhill from there. We had hoped to store our luggage at Wien Mitte for the day, but the station was under renovation and did not have any luggage storage facilities. So we headed for another major train station, Sudbahnhof, where we had to go anyway to buy our train tickets to Bratislava. After struggling to figure out the unnecessarily complex underground system (we needed an "S" line, not a "U" line - of course!) we made our way to Sudbahnhof. But, it turns out that Sudnbahnhof is about the size of Texas and we had to walk a few hundred metres from our exit up the road to the main part of the station. When we eventually figured that out (there was no helpful signage), we discovered that they don't have luggage storage facilities either and that we actually need Westbahnhof, which does have luggage storage facilities.

So we bought our train tickets to Bratislava (which were crazily cheap) and set off in search of the number 18 tram, which would take us to Westbahnhof. That was a mission in itself. Another walk of a few hundred metres and we (somehow) found the correct tram line. But without any logical sort of signage, we hopped on the number 18 tram going in the wrong direction. Luckily, we worked that out and hopped off after one stop and crossed the tracks to wait for the number 18 tram going in the right direction. Eventually we arrived at Westbahnhof and found the luggage storage area. We locked up our suitcases and (finally) made our way to the Christmas markets!

Vienna is renowned for having amazing Christmas markets and they actually have several sites across the city packed with market stalls. We headed to the Rathaus Christmas markets first and they were awesome. There were some really amazing Christmas decorations, toys and crafts for sale, not to mention the amazing selection of food and drinks.

We got some hot chocolate (in specially decorated Christmas market mugs!) to warm us up a little as we walked around admiring the treasures for sale. We also got some delicious hot cinnamon bread things that we had had in Prague a few Christmases earlier.

After an hour or so, we decided to move on to the Spittelberg Christmas markets, just a few blocks away. Unfortunately, the Spittelberg markets had closed the day before, so there not much happening at all in that area. But we found a pub where we had a light lunch and then we returned to the Rathaus markets.

By late afternoon it was starting to get dark and the Christmas lights at the market were starting to take effect. They looked brilliant. It was actually fairly mild temperature wise in Vienna - about 7 or 8 degrees, although it was drizzling on and off for most of the day. On our return to the Rathaus markets, we had a few of our Christmas favourites - some mulled wine and a delicious hot dog. Megs bought a little toy Christmas train (very cool) and then we rounded off our day at the markets with some hot roasted nuts - yum.

We then did a circuit of Vienna's train stations again - Westbahnhof to collect our luggage and then Sudbahnhof to catch our train to Bratislava. We caught the 6.20pm train, which arrived in Bratislava at about 7.30pm - a very quick trip on a rather empty train.

Rathaus

Pretty
Christmas
decor-
ations

Burg-
theater

Market
stalls

Woah!
Santa's
sleigh

Snowman
at the pub

Austria
Parlia-
ment

Back at
Rathaus

Pretty
lights

Bear

Saturday, December 4, 2010

ATP World Tour Finals

Every year the tennis season draws to a close with the ATP World Tour Finals, where the top 8 ranked mens players in the world meet and battle it out over the course of a week to see who ends up as "World Tour Champion". Last year saw the World Tour Finals move to London's O2 stadium and it was such a success that the 2010 Finals were also held at the O2.

We booked tickets for the second semi-final, way back in the middle of the year, obviously not knowing who we would be seeing, but hoping that we would be lucky enough to see either Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. As it turned out, Federer and Nadal both won all three of their respective pool matches. Nadal drew Andy Murray in the first semi-final and Federer drew world number 3 Novak Djokovic in the second semi-final. We were so delighted to be able to see Federer play live. We had previously seen Nadal live at the 2009 French Open, but we had never seen Federer play before.

Nadal beat Murray in a thrilling three-set match in the first semi-final, so the chances of yet another Nadal v Federer final spiced up our match even more. We got out to the O2 early and met up with Neena and Kristen, who also had tickets to the second semi-final. We had a drink in one of the bars at the O2 and then grabbed some thai for dinner.

Then we settled in to watch the match. The atmosphere was quite different to a grand slam event. Obviously it's indoors, which is very different, but there was a lot of music, special effects and lighting, which made it seem a little more like a heavyweight boxing fight than a tennis match. And it wasn't far off it in tennis terms - world number 2 v world number 3, two players in brilliant form and a surface that favoured attacking shots.

The final score suggests that Djokovic copped a hiding, but in truth, both men played brilliantly. Federer was just a step above the Serb. He was so clinical in everything he did that Djokovic had no chance. Federer won 6-1, 6-4 to progress to the final. We would have liked to see a longer match, but we were certainly treated to some sublime tennis and it was pretty special to watch the greatest tennis player in history at the top of his game. And it rounded off a fantastic year for sports events, after we also visited the home of golf, St Andrews and saw Tiger Woods in the British Open.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Paris, France

Saturday

On the weekend of 13 and 14 November, we took the Eurostar down to Paris to celebrate Kristen's 27th birthday (actually 30th - shhhh!). We arrived in Paris around 10.30am on Saturday and checked into the hotel in the St Germain district. The rest of the crew were out finding some breakfast, so the two of us headed out in search of the Orangery Museum!

The Orangery (or Musee de l'Orangerie des Tuileries) is an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings located on the Place de la Concorde. It contains works by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and others, but it is most famous for its amazing Claude Monet water-lily paintings, known as the Nympheas. The Nympheas are displayed on four curved walls in each of two oval-shaped rooms (photos below). They really are amazing. Up close, the brush strokes looks messy and almost careless, but when you step back and look at each painting as a whole, the detail is amazing.

After visiting the Orangery, we wandered through the lovely gardens, up past the Louvre and back across the river to the St Germain district. We grabbed some lunch from a great sandwich shop called Lina's. We were still having trouble locating the others, so we went for a walk through the Luxembourg Gardens. The weather was fairly poor - it was reasonably warm for the time of year, but there was almost constant drizzle for the whole weekend, which was a little annoying.

Having finally heard that some of the other kids were at The Highlander pub in preparation for the All Blacks' match against Scotland, we made our way there to join them. We were reminded how expensive Paris is, when we ordered a pint of beer and a lime and soda at The Highlander and it came to 4,500 euros or thereabouts. It is seriously more than double the price for a pint of beer in Paris as it is in London... It was great to catch up with so many people we had not seen in a long time.

After watching the first half of the All Blacks' demolition job at Murrayfield, we headed to the restaurant that Kristen had booked for her birthday celebration dinner. The restaurant was really fun - it had a great Parisien atmostphere (which a group of 20-odd drunk Kiwis certainly added to) and the food was really yum too. After dinner, we were treated to a couple of delightful speeches and some nimble balancing on a chair by Andrew.

After dinner we went to a pub to continue Kristen's birthday celebrations. We had a false start, as we had to hastily depart the first pub we went in to thanks to Cam. The second pub, however, was great and we settled in there for a few hours. Their pints were also close to a million euros each, but we didn't let that put us off.

We were treated to live coverage of the heavyweight title fight between David Haye and Audley Harrison. The first two rounds had a total of zero punches thrown and then in the third round, Haye destroyed Harrison, knocking him out with a barrage of huge hits. Harrison was a disgrace. However, we managed to amuse ourselves pretty well for the rest of the night (photos below).

Sunday

Things moved pretty slowly on Sunday morning. Most of us didn't emerge until close to 11am...some much later than that! Alex and Neena had arranged a birthday cake and some balloons for Kristen, which was an awesome start to the day! Then we headed to a brilliant patisserie for some delicious treats before settling down to brunch at an amazing "steak frites" restaurant next to our hotel. You pay a set price and they serve you a huge plate of steak and fries, with their special sauce. Just when you're done, they come aound with a second serving - brilliant.

After brunch, by which time Andrew had risen from the dead, we took several hours to decide what to do next, before eventually settling on a visit to La Saint-Chapelle (the Holy Chapel). The Saint-Capelle is a Gothic cathedral on the Ile de la Cite in the heart of Paris. The chapel was constructed in the mid-1200s and is famous for its spectacular stained-glass windows. Part of the chapel was under repair, but it was still stunning and definitely worth the queue to get in.

Later in the afternoon we wandered through the Le Marais district of Paris, renowned for its little streets, shops and cafes. The weather had packed in a bit, so we sought some shelter in a big cafe and we managed to catch the last few minutes of the final Formula One race of the season, where amazingly, Sebastian Vettel won the race and the two guys ahead of him in the championship standings finished well back, handing the title to Vettel. It was a really relaxing afternoon, as we had a few drinks and some cheese and snacks and talked some jibber jabber.

A little more wandering of shops rounded out the day for us. We found a knife shop, where Andrew tested out one of the carving knives by shaving his face with it. It was pretty sharp. We were heading back to London on Sunday evening, while a few of the crew were staying on until Monday morning, so we had one last drink in a bar and took some stunning portrait photos (below) and then made our way to the Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar back to sunny London.